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A Washington Election Without Any Voting

The Kennedy Center Honors have celebrated lifetime achievements in the performing arts for 32 years, and for 32 years there have been popular telecasts, White House receptions for the winners and the occasional critic scanning the list of honorees and saying, “Huh?”

A few eyebrows were raised again last month when the Kennedy Center selected Oprah Winfrey as one of the five honorees this year.

Commentators there and elsewhere noted that while Ms. Winfrey’s contributions to American culture were significant, her impact had largely been as a talk show host, not as a performer who acted in “The Color Purple” and about 10 other films.

It turns out that the selection process by the center’s trustees is largely an informal affair, long on efforts at creating balance, recognizing achievement and acknowledging public appeal, and short on any kind of balloting or written rules.

There is a nominating process that draws recommendations from roughly 100 artists, who all get a letter from George Stevens Jr., who, as producer of the event, has managed the awards since he created them in 1978. “The primary criterion is excellence,” the letter states.

Actually, excellence is the only criterion spelled out in the letter, though it clarifies that the excellence should be in artistic achievement in the fields of dance, music, theater, opera, motion pictures or television.

The scope of achievements considered has contributed to the wide spectrum in honorees, from Mstislav Rostropovich to Danny Kaye. Most years five people are honored, but there have been as many as seven.

Johnny Carson, like Ms. Winfrey a talk show host, was honored in 1993. Numerous recipients have been people who directed performances rather than performed themselves. Producers have typically not been recognized.

Mr. Stevens demurred at providing a list of the people nominated this year, saying that was “part of the internal process.”

Michael M. Kaiser, the president of the Kennedy Center, said there was nothing overly secretive about the deliberations, carried out by a subset of the Kennedy Center board in consultation with him and Mr. Stevens.

Honorees are generally American. Many years ago, though, the center decided that some honorees could be non-Americans (like Paul McCartney this year) who have made important contributions to American culture. This decision was also not formally voted on or written down. (And you thought Washington was awash in red tape.)

Photo

George Stevens Jr. has managed the Kennedy Center Honors process, which involves no voting, since he started the event in 1978.Credit
Axel Koester for The New York Times

Mr. Kaiser said Mr. Stevens had created a good process that had worked smoothly over the years. “I don’t think there was ever the need for sort of bylaws, if you will,” he said.

From the list of names suggested by the artists, Mr. Kaiser, Mr. Stevens and the Kennedy Center’s chairman produce a shortlist of 15 or fewer names. This list goes to the seven voting members of the center’s executive committee, who make the final cuts. This year the committee held two conference calls in mid-August to come up with a consensus.

At no time does the process involve a tabulation of votes, like the Oscars.

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Nor is the selection process in any way political, he said, or influenced by CBS, which has always broadcast the awards, and its quest for ratings. The White House, whose occupant Ms. Winfrey had some hand in electing, has no role in the awards, he said, beyond the reception that is held there.

(Any doubters should consider that Barbra Streisand won in 2008, when George W. Bush was president. They hugged and kissed at the White House reception.)

“You have this powerful combination: the rock stars of politics meeting the great icons of the arts in one evening,” said Robert L. Lynch, the president of Americans for the Arts, an advocacy organization.

To be sure, the process behind other prestigious awards can be similarly opaque. The MacArthur Foundation maintains a Kremlin-esque secrecy about how the winners of its so-called genius grants are chosen. Nominators, evaluators and selectors all serve anonymously, and their correspondence is confidential.

Mr. Stevens said the Kennedy Center’s selection process was shaped by a desire for diversity. “You don’t want five white males or five choreographers,” he said.

Of the five winners this year — Ms. Winfrey, Mr. McCartney, Merle Haggard, Jerry Herman and Bill T. Jones — four are men, three are musicians, three are white, two are black, and one is a choreographer.

For the record, the center’s Web site, kennedy-center.org, says Ms. Winfrey is being recognized for her “soul-stirring performances on screen,” numerous producing endeavors and her award-winning television show.

“She has spent her life creating innovative projects that have proven time and again her unique ability to enhance the world’s exposure to the arts and perception of humanity,” the site says.

One also unwritten but unbending rule of the Kennedy Center Honors is that you have to show up. The event is a major fund-raiser for the center; tickets to the gala, which will be on Dec. 5, can cost as much as $5,000. And through the television broadcast, which takes place roughly three weeks later, the Honors are also a major part of the Kennedy Center’s national profile. So snagging honorees with some celebrity has obvious benefits.

Mr. Stevens said he pursued Katharine Hepburn for several years before she finally agreed to be honored.

The pianist Vladimir Horowitz said he would accept the award, according to Mr. Stevens, but only if the show were at 4 in the afternoon and he were the only person honored.

“It was not quite what the Kennedy Center had in mind,” Mr. Stevens said.

A version of this article appears in print on October 12, 2010, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Washington Election Without Any Voting. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe